


for tomorrow may rain, so I'll follow the sun

by stellarwobble



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Episode: s04e20 The Last Man, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-24
Updated: 2011-04-24
Packaged: 2017-10-18 15:17:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/190227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stellarwobble/pseuds/stellarwobble
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She keeps going back to Rodney and he keeps letting her in. Set in the alternate timeline of <i>The Last Man</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	for tomorrow may rain, so I'll follow the sun

When Katie returns Earth feels noisy and crowded. Dirt and litter on the streets upset her to the point where she starts to feel reluctant to go outside. Her dreams of Pegasus feel more real than her waking life. Then she hears of Teyla’s death and her fantasies bring no more consolation.

The SCG is scaling down and Katie leaves before anyone can tell her she’s not needed anymore. She came to Cheyenne Mountain two years before the Atlantis mission first departed. She remembers seeing the gate for the first time, going through weapons training with Sgt Siler, Lt Ford laughing in the commissary. Remembers how she felt like this was somewhere she could belong.

She leaves Bill Lee with a list of things to look out for in alien spores. He puts it in his desk and goes back to his plans for perfecting Atlantis’ shields. He’s been pouring over them obsessively since word came of Colonel Carter’s death, the last thing she asked of him. It makes people uncomfortable, and there’s talk of having him pulled from duty. They promise to keep in touch, and two years later Bill is the one to tell her that Laura Cadman died in a suicide blast outside Kabul.

*

She meets Rodney in a shopping mall. He looks so tired, and his shirt is buttoned unevenly. There’s a rush of tenderness inside Katie that she didn’t expect at all. She thinks that this is probably where she should run. But there’s nowhere left to go.

She goes to see him, safe in her belief that he’ll tell her to go away and it’ll be the end of it. But he lets her into his tiny apartment. Every flat surface is covered in papers with scrawled equations, only a very small fraction of which are assignments from his students. Katie sits on his couch while Rodney quickly forgets about her and goes back to work.

A few hours later Katie calls for takeout and they’re halfway through their meal before Rodney remembers to talk to her.

"So, uh, you’re in, what, some pharmaceutical company, right?"

"Yes, I managed to have some of the finds from, from." She can’t bring herself to mention Atlantis and gestures towards the window, upwards, where a slim strip of night sky is visible above the building across the street. "I had some of the substances I isolated declassified."

"So you could cure cancer, or something?" Rodney looks down at the table, eyes distant and sad.

Katie shrugs. Things don’t happen that way. Rodney’s already picked up one of his notepads, but he’s not writing anything, just stares at it. She can leave now and never see him again. Rodney will go on with his equations, but though she once believed he could fix anything there is nothing that can turn back time for them.

But then Rodney puts his notepad down and reaches across the table to touch her cheek. She leans into his touch.

"You, you should leave." He swallows. "I’m not, I can’t."

His bedroom is a mess and their touches are clumsy. Now she knows, this hurts too, this is just another loss.

*

She’s given a new office at the company, with tasteful art and an impossibly shiny desk. Goes on dates and tries to make small talk without cringing inside. David visits her in between his different IFAD assignments, and they always end up sharing memories of Atlantis feverishly long into the night.

She keeps going back to Rodney and he keeps letting her in. One night as he’s tapping away on his laptop next to her in bed she asks what he’s working on.

Katie looks at the sky as he tells her of his plan to get Sheppard back. The night is cloudy but it doesn’t matter, Katie can close her eyes anytime and see the autumn sky over Athos as it looked at the end of harvest season.

"So this will all go away?"

Rodney doesn’t answer but the tapping ceases and she feels a warm hand on her shoulder.

He usually sleeps for a few hours before dawn. Katie wakes wrapped in his arms and wonders if he dreams of Jennifer Keller.

*

Before, Rodney used to stay the night in Katie’s quarters on Atlantis. They slept close on her narrow bed and more often than not Rodney had to leave in the middle of the night to answer some emergency call. Sometimes he couldn’t sleep and she’d wake and feel him stroking her hair.

"Still not a cat, you know."

And Rodney would laugh a little and say "Hm, I’m not so sure, actually."

She used to wonder if he couldn’t sleep for nightmares or if he just couldn’t turn his brain off, but she never got round to asking.

*

Rodney only sees her daughter once. She hasn’t seen him in three years when the call comes. Trapped in his apartment after he slipped on in icy patch on the sidewalk and broke his leg, he couldn’t think of anyone else that might help him.

Katie brings groceries and tells Marianne not to touch anything about fifteen times. Rodney’s clearly mortified to be so dependent on anyone and spends most of their short visit staring at his whiteboard. The equations are now so complex that Katie can’t even make a guess at what principles they’re based on. Rodney could really be inventing a new kind of math. He could also be going a little insane.

Before they leave Katie forces him to lie on the couch and stands over him as he takes his painkillers. He looks at Marianne for the first time then, but makes no comment.

"Why was the man so sad?" Marianne asks in the car on the way home.

"He’s lost his friends." It slips out before she realizes that the broken leg would probably have been a perfectly acceptable explanation. But Rodney’s losses are now an inextricable part of him. "Look sweetheart, you can see the stars tonight."

Katie was just a little girl when her dad left. He came home one day just to gather some things and then he walked out. She grew up dreaming of space and spaceships. Of belonging to a crew, having the sort of friends that would have her back no matter how dangerous the situation. The stars held her hope, and for a short time it was all real. It was real before she lost it.

*

Though their contact dwindles Katie never quite stops worrying about Rodney. It’s been several years since she last saw him, and she’s started thinking that he might have died when he calls her. They meet at a café this time, Rodney looking tense, a perpetual stranger among other people now.

He’s heard that David died, so he must be in touch with someone else from the expedition. Probably Zelenka.

"How’s your daughter ... ah, Suzy, was it?"

"Marianne."

"Really? Huh. Um, so, she OK?"

"Yeah, I guess. She’s in college now. Stanford." _She still misses David. We thought it was the right choice, to give her a father, but his death was so hard on her._

He fiddles with his coffee cup, the sleeves on his cardigan. Leans across the table and lowers his voice.

"I was at the SCG yesterday. Did you know Lorne is still in charge?"

"Yes." She had called many times when David was in the hospital. The general was always busy.

Rodney reaches across the table and takes her hand. At first she can’t read his expression, and then it hits her, he’s happy.

"I’m going back. Back to. You know. Back."

She doesn’t have to ask to know that this means Rodney’s done it. Found a way to change the timeline, get Sheppard back, save Teyla and her child. The world goes narrow around her, she’s only aware of Rodney’s warm hand curled around hers, the young people at the other tables talking and laughing. From now on, her world will be a lie.

*

It makes no sense at all but she goes to see Rodney after he’s back from Atlantis. His apartment is neat, now, all the papers cleared away and the writing screen unused and dark in a corner. Rodney looks older, sadder, and she thinks that he probably used his work as a shield against his grief.

Again they kiss, undress, fuck and go to sleep. Katie wakes before dawn to see Rodney standing by the window.

"You’re thinking too loud." His only response is a short, toneless laugh. "Come back to bed."

He does, and pulls her on top of him. Katie stays awake for some time. Rodney runs his hand slowly along her back, and just before she goes to sleep she feels him stroking her hair.

End

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the sg_rarepairings 2009 ficathon, using the prompt _Katie/Rodney, Get back to where you once belonged_.


End file.
